How to Disable Hover Actions in Gmail

Have you noticed that when you hover over one of the emails in your inbox, a bunch of little icons appear at the far right side of the message line?

This is due to a feature in Gmail called “Hover Actions” and it’s meant to provide you with an easier way to perform some of the more common actions you might need to do with an email. But if you find these hover actions to be unnecessary or even problematic, then you can turn them off by adjusting a setting in Gmail.

How to Change the Hover Action Setting in Gmail

The steps in this article were performed in the desktop version of the Google Chrome Web browser. These steps will also work in other desktop browsers like Firefox and Safari. Note that this setting is applied to your account, so it will change the hover actions whenever you sign into your account from any computer.

Step 1: Navigate to your Gmail inbox and sign into your account if you haven’t already.

Step 2: Click the gear icon at the top-right of the window, then choose the Settings option.

Step 3: Scroll down to the Hover actions option, then click the circle to the left of Disable hover actions.

Step 4: Scroll to the bottom of the menu and click the Save Changes button.